Sunday, March 5, 2006
Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan
Sunny
~50F

Morning
Well after all that traveling yesterday, I slept right thru the small earthquake at 3:30am local time. A couple of guys mentioned it at breakfast (just a bed shake). I woke up briefly at 4am and was able to get back to sleep until 6:30am. Had a yummy "full american" breakfast at the hotel restaurant.

There's something like 20 people from different NASA groups here this week. There were 4 folks from Huntsville, AL that were heading into Tokyo this morning so 2 from our group joined them. Five of us headed out to climb Mt. Tsukuba (The Mt Fuji of the East) at 877m.

Mt. Tsukuba
We took a 40 minute bus ride to the base. There are two peaks on the mountain and it somewhat resembles the eyes of a frog so there were frog trinkets in all the shops. There is a cable car to take us up to the 800m level and then we hoofed it from there up the rocks and steps to the shrine on top. We were all sucking wind a couple of times during the "ascent". Coming back down to the cable car station, there is a walking path along the ridge of the mountain connecting the two peaks. The second peak is slightly higher and the trail was cast in shadows so there was plenty of mud and traces of snow. The view, however, was worth the trek. It was really hazy so we couldn't see great distances but we could all imagine what a spectacular view might be possible on a clear day. From that peak, a cable car gondola took us down to the south side of the mountain where we grabbed the bus back to Tsukuba.

Afternoon
We were all ready for a sit down lunch and a cold beer. On the walk back to the hotel we stopped at the local drug store to pickup essentials...water, beer, and chap stick :)

Its 3:00pm and I've already got 10000+ steps in for the day. I'll probably take a nap and then walk around Tsukuba some more before dinner.

Hope all is well back in Houston.